On Tue, 2006-11-28 at 00:56 +0100, Mark Wielaard wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> It has been 2 weeks now since the announcement that Sun will release
> Java under the GPL and will adopt the classpath exception for the j2se
> libraries to be compatible with all our efforts. And I must say I am
> still recovering from the happy surprise! :)
>
> I deliberately waited a little to let it all sink in and to be able to
> talk to several of you and read all the reactions on Planet Classpath.
> And to actually see the actions of Sun. They have delivered and having
> spoken to several Sun people now has convinced me they are really
> genuine. And the FSF agrees with that. We can include any GPL+exception
> parts from OpenJDK in GNU Classpath if they are useful. And other GPLed
> parts can of course be included in other GPL-compatible Free Software
> projects the community is working on.
>
> We used to be really suspicious about Sun and possible code
> "contamination" (accidental copyright infringement), but all this will
> soon be a thing of the past. The GPL acts as a covenant between all
> parties. There is no fear anymore that there is any copyright
> infringement going on between the projects (if you do keep track of the
> original copyright statements of course) since they will all use the
> same license. And the GPL acts like a patent shield between all parties.
>
> And it seems GNU Classpath hackers are really happy about this. Sure it
> sucks a little to have two duplicated free code bases for the core
> libraries in the future. But for Sun to make their license explicitly
> compatible is a really big thing. And they deserve major kudos for it.
>
> This means people and projects will be able to gradually shift between
> the various projects, mixing and matching just what is needed to get
> higher compatibility, performance and features. And I do hope that will
> happen, just as it has happened in the past with all the projects
> adopting and collaborating around GNU Classpath. The way Sun did this
> brings a high credibility to their effort and as Jonathan Schwartz said
> during the presentation of OpenJDK we can now start trying to figure out
> how from this point on we all can work together and not duplicate
> efforts: http://gnu.wildebeest.org/diary/index.php?p=171
>
> The uptake and the drive behind GNU Classpath has been enormous. Just
> seeing the amount of patches flow in the last 2 weeks (it looks like
> this announcement made people work even harder to show off how cool GNU
> Classpath really is!) and the quality of the code (the regressions in
> Mauve are really minor - down to a handfull now - compared to the huge
> increase in features and code since the last release) is amazing. And it
> seems the adoption, features, maturity and collaboration have only been
> increasing over the years. I have the feeling our work, and our honest
> open collaborative nature, is substantially responsible for Sun's change
> in policy. This really is your victory. And we have now been promoted
> from "Freedom Fighters" that are trying to keep a free Java path to
> Libre Java platform innovators that will work on equal footing with the
> larger Java eco-system from now on.
>
> It is impossible to predict the future (and I haven't even thought about
> the implications that come from the fact that Sun decided to also
> release JEE and JME under the GPL, completing the whole Java picture).
> But it is clear that the future is very bright. It is also clear that we
> have some commitments to the community, the various projects around GNU
> Classpath and the users and distros relying on our work.
>
> Sun is really trying to do this correctly and by picking their
> development branch (1.7) for building up the free product and community
> they showed that they do understand how building a developer community
> works. this will allow them to incorporate the community input on a
> product that is still shaping up instead of dumping some source code as
> a finished product and project. But this also means it will not be all
> ready at once for our own community for immediate adoption. And even
> after half a year when all code should be out there it will still take
> time and effort to adopt.
>
> I think our commitment to our community, users and projects is that we
> should not regress on freedom. We will provide free versions of anything
> that Sun won't be able to release (yet). We will not regress in
> coverage. All the platforms, projects and programs that run now with GNU
> Classpath should run in the future. And we won't regress on having fun
> innovating and hacking together! Which to me means we should make it
> easy to adopt and collaborate. We want to make it easy for people to
> improve together with GNU Classpath and OpenJDK by helping also the
> small projects with less resources to adopt the new innovation
> (coordinating new VM and Platform interfaces, etc.)
>
> So now the short time roadmap. We are ready for a
